Maria is a 13-year-old girl growing up on a village in the island of Crete. She is solitary, eccentric, and empathetic, possesses a wild streak, and is a fanciful daydreamer. Her father mysteriously disappeared when she was two years old, and ever since, she has lived alone with her mother, a cold and stern woman, who is submissive to others but demanding and perennially angry with her daughter. When Maria sets their home on fire, she is forced to find the money to repair it. This affords her the opportunity to enter into the magical new world of archaeological excavation. Living in a society that is sympathetic to the plights of outsiders but refuses to tend to its own wounds, Maria participates in midnight runs and night work dedicated to lonely, poor, disenfranchised people. She includes supportive letters of solace in the care packages she prepares, which leads her to Andreas, who will play a key role in helping her uncover her individual and collective past. Accompanied by a tiger and the dangers lurking in the jungle of her mind, as the excavations proceed deeper into the earth and reveal treasures from past civilizations and long lost eras, Maria undertakes her own plunge into her father's past, unearthing secrets and exposing lies that will help solve the mystery of his disappearance. Finally, when a drought sucks up every last drop of water in the village and leaves its residents thirsty, people's masks come off and the monsters hiding beneath them are exposed. Meanwhile, the gorilla dances on the moon threateningly, yet pitifully. He dances poking fun at four boys who once wanted to make it there – to make it everywhere. The inventor, the gorilla, the guardian of the moon, and the one who just wanted to look at it… It is only when the maze-like basement of the palace of Knossos is shaken at its very foundations and King Minos loses his sleep that the storm lets loose. And the rain that comes down ends up affirming the love that Maria's mother feels for her. Love is like a chameleon. It takes the color of the person offering it. An exercise in imagination and magic realism with plenty of secrecy, unexpected turns, and constant reversals of fortune.
